Verbose, overtly descriptive with meagre smatterings of dialogue, irritating flashes forwards and backwards through time, an annoying amount of foreshadowing, inhumanly long paragraphs leading to chapters of unholy length and what is surely the death blow for a love story: Unlikeable Romantic Leads (She's Cold, He's Creepy)-By all accounts, this reader should have hated Love In The Time Of Cholera.
But surely, slowly and insidiously, Marquez worked his magic, reeling me in when I had no idea of being hooked, an Omniscient narrator not so much creating a world, but convincing me that one exists and inviting me to partake of it's peoples' lives and loves as they live through a change of century, civil wars, modernisation and the titular epidemic.
Like Atonement, Cholera is deceptively sly, convincing you that it's a love story, while cunningly suggesting at times, that it's anything but.
Florentino Ariza's unrequited love for Fermina Daza (has there ever been a more brutal rejection of a man's love by a woman in fiction?) , like the best Love Stories, spans decades, but it's apparently no deterrant to various, transitionary liasons with lonely and widowed women (622 in all) culminating in a tragic and frankly, despicable Humbert- like seduction of a young Lolita left in his charge.
But in spite of it, you are carried feverishly along the "will they or won't they" Love Story Suspense Arc , hoping for a joyful resolution to Florentino's 51 year wait.
Marquez masterfully chronicles love in all it's blissfull and painful guises; feverish adolescent passion, the treacherous minefield of tangled and conflicted emotions in a long marriage, fleeting happiness snatched from all too brief affairs not to mention erotic and romantic fulfillment in old age.
If Atonement was metafiction couched in the language of a Doomed Romance, Cholera is a dense meditation on Love and Relationships ensconced comfortably, even deceptively, in the tropes of an Epic Romance.
Sensual, Tragic, Funny, Surreal and most of all, Hearbreakingly Romantic, "El amor en los tiempos del cólera'' is terrific.
4 stars.
But surely, slowly and insidiously, Marquez worked his magic, reeling me in when I had no idea of being hooked, an Omniscient narrator not so much creating a world, but convincing me that one exists and inviting me to partake of it's peoples' lives and loves as they live through a change of century, civil wars, modernisation and the titular epidemic.
Like Atonement, Cholera is deceptively sly, convincing you that it's a love story, while cunningly suggesting at times, that it's anything but.
Florentino Ariza's unrequited love for Fermina Daza (has there ever been a more brutal rejection of a man's love by a woman in fiction?) , like the best Love Stories, spans decades, but it's apparently no deterrant to various, transitionary liasons with lonely and widowed women (622 in all) culminating in a tragic and frankly, despicable Humbert- like seduction of a young Lolita left in his charge.
But in spite of it, you are carried feverishly along the "will they or won't they" Love Story Suspense Arc , hoping for a joyful resolution to Florentino's 51 year wait.
Marquez masterfully chronicles love in all it's blissfull and painful guises; feverish adolescent passion, the treacherous minefield of tangled and conflicted emotions in a long marriage, fleeting happiness snatched from all too brief affairs not to mention erotic and romantic fulfillment in old age.
If Atonement was metafiction couched in the language of a Doomed Romance, Cholera is a dense meditation on Love and Relationships ensconced comfortably, even deceptively, in the tropes of an Epic Romance.
Sensual, Tragic, Funny, Surreal and most of all, Hearbreakingly Romantic, "El amor en los tiempos del cólera'' is terrific.
4 stars.
4 comments:
Here here! As usual, you have outdone yourself with this spot on review of a great book.
The Monkey
As usual, I bow to The Monkey's infinite wisdom:-)
beautifully written, and you really captured the book ...
Dear Bib,
Thank you. Nothing like strawberries dipped in hot chocolate to get one waxing lyrical over romance!
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